Vehicle seats often include a costly material that encompasses the vehicle seat to provide a seated occupant of the vehicle with a level of comfort, as well as to provide an aesthetically appealing style. Typically, the vehicle seat includes a seat base portion and a seat back portion, with the seat back portion having a rear surface. Both the seat base portion and the seat back portion often include various degrees of freedom of movement. Such movement may include a rearward and forward translation of the seat base portion, rotatable “tilt” of the seat base portion, and rotatable motion of the seat back portion to allow a plurality of recline angle positions for the seated occupant to select from. Current vehicles often include powered and memory movement of the seat base portion and the seat back portion to monitor and control the movement of the seats. Vehicles employing powered and memory movement include manual operation by the seated occupant and/or a memory recall system that may be programmed to assist in moving the seat to a desired position.
Although beneficial for seated occupant comfort, such movements of the seat base portion and the seat back portion may result in contact with an object proximate the rear surface of the seat base portion and/or the seat back portion. This is particularly common in vehicles with a single seat row, such as vans, trucks and sports cars, for example, with a bulkhead disposed in close proximity to the rear surface of the vehicle seat. Unfortunately, such contact may result in damage to the seat surface, thereby detracting from the aesthetic appeal of the vehicle and potentially requiring costly improvements to remedy such damage.